THE HIGHS
James Davenport: The RPGood Life
I can always remember where I was, and who I was, when a new Bethesda game arrived. Because of their scope and density, I associate them more with a sense of place than most media. I was 16 when Oblivion came out. My stealthy Khajiit named Barb was a bit antithetical to my boisterous teen self. What was important during the Oblivion years: football, crushes, eating burgers with four patties, fighting with my dad. A few years later when Fallout 3 came out I had started my freshman year of college. Barb was still stealthy and still antithetical to my awkward young adult self. She was confident, mean sometimes. Important during the Fallout 3 years: punching doors, Frank Zappa’s profundity, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Skyrim met me near the end of my college career in 2011. Barb went Argonian, but stuck with stealth. Priorities then: being angry about paperwork, Tuesday drinking habits, black metal, greek yogurt.
And here we are in 2015 just after the release of Fallout 4. I’ve moved on from Barb to GRONnifer, and stealth isn’t my M.O. anymore. My personal priorities mostly revolve around eating and acclimating to city life (the buildings, they go into the sky!) rather than being angry about everything. It’s hard to see exactly who I am right now, but I know that by the time the next open-world Bethesda game rolls around, I’ll see 2015 in sharp relief and some overwrought waves of nostalgia will reduce me to a puddle of sad, sappy, super-contented goo. Fallout 4 is far from perfect. Every Bethesda game is. But each functions as a space where I’m forced to get to spend time with myself. When I make the decision to be a jerk, or subvert every obstacle by hacking, the decision extends beyond what I think is ‘cool’ at the time. Those decisions are extensions of me, and so every iterative Barb or GRONnifer isn’t just a character. Wastelands and Tamriel aren’t maps. They’re the places and people I’ve been.
Chris Livingston: Can we talk?
I don't like to listen in video games. My typical disposition toward talkative video game characters is: hey, can you shut up so I can play? It's not always the case: I loved a number of characters in the Mass Effect series, and was almost always interested in what they had to say. I'm finding, a bit to my surprise, something similar in Fallout 4. Not with your average wasteland schmoes and quest-givers—I do still skip a lot of chatter—but with several of the companions.
I won't be specific, but two of the companions I've traveled with are really enjoyable to talk to. As you spend time with them, and provided they grow to like you, they'll occasionally pull you aside for a bit of conversation. Ordinarily, a follower in a game wanting a time-out for chit-chat would annoy me, but I'm genuinely excited when these characters want to talk to me, share their thoughts, and tell me more about themselves. And they don't just want to talk to me, either. One follower excused himself and had a brief and entertaining conversation with another NPC, and now I'm just leading him around to other areas, hoping he'll chat with other people. For the first time in a Bethesda game, I'm being a good listener.
Tim Clark: BlizzCon too fun, nerf pls
Seeing as BlizzCon ended in a blaze of Linkin Park last Saturday (by which point I was mercifully on a plane), I suppose it can’t be my high of the week. But I will say that if you’ve ever had any inclination to attend a BlizzCon, you should definitely go for it. I generally hate being in any gathering of humanity big enough to fill a minibus, but Blizzard superfans are just so goddamn nice that it was a pleasure drifting between panels, tournaments and interviews as they chattered about DPS maxing, hero choices, and OP decks. A truly special event.
My actual high, predictably, is the release of Hearthstone’s League of Explorer’s adventure yesterday. I was a little down on the set after the announcement, because I couldn’t see it remedying some long standing issues with the way the game’s structured and balanced. But while those doubts persist to a degree, I had undervalued how much fun any injection of new cards is—and there are some doozies in here.
Reno Jackson is already getting brewed into Control Warrior and Priest decks for his powerful mega-heal effect, and the unfancied Summoning Stone seems to be proving surprisingly strong in a new Freeze Mage variant. If you fancy watching some Hearthstone this weekend, check out the Seat Story Cup IV. The “relaxed” vibe (read: “sometimes drunk”) is the antithesis of the World Championships at BlizzCon in terms of seriousness, but Seat Story still has some of the best players in the world competing and casting. Head here to watch.
Wes Fenlon: Free rats! Praise the Vermintide
I haven’t played as much Vermintide as I’d like, but I really dig it: Left4Dead with weighty melee combat and an addictive loot system. I’m glad it’s been successful (300,000 copies!) and I’m glad to see Fatshark patching the game and adding its first update for free, with improvements and additions to the loot system. Sigmar’s Blessing, the update coming on December 3, adds a new loot class and ways to buff your existing weapons. Also, it won’t be the last bit of free DLC for the game: the rest of the releases will alternate between free and paid. Hopefully the paid updates feel substantial enough to be worth the price. So far, I’m optimistic about Vermintide having some life in it. Now for that mod support, please.
Tom Senior: Work hard, Klei hard
Invisible, Inc is a turn-based spy game, and one of my favourite games of 2015. Mark of the Ninja is a gorgeous 2D stealth game. Don’t Starve is a surreal sandbox survival sim that is very, very hard to switch off. All are free to try this weekend on Steam. It’s a great opportunity to sample the works of a studio that’s been quietly producing brilliant stuff for years.
Perhaps you only have time for one, which to pick? Mark of the Ninja is the most accessible and immediately satisfying of the bunch. Invisible, Inc’s punishing campaigns might seem initially frustrating, but it’s absolutely worth persisting with so you can replay the game at increasingly interesting difficulty levels. Plus, it’s about to get a DLC pack that adds more agents. Don’t starve is great, too, though you’re better off asking Tim about his 271 day survival streak to find out why. Ultimately, Invisible, Inc has my vote, though I do love spies enough to enjoy Alpha Protocol more than it probably deserved.
Tom Marks: I want to believe
I think Edmund McMillen might be trolling the most dedicated part of his playerbase, and I love it. I spent my morning researching an absolutely ludicrous Binding of Isaac ARG that may not even be a real thing. It probably is, but we really don’t know yet. Whatever the heck is going on, it’s a whole lot of fun to follow. McMillen commented on my inquiry about it by saying only “bring a shovel!”, which I imagine will be more significant to those down in the dirt already digging through cryptic messages.
I love ARGs like this. So far none have been able to match the scale and wonder of Valve’s Portal 2 ARG from 2010, and I don’t think this one will get that big, but it’s great to see that weird feeling of wonder and confusion wash over a gaming community again. It’s easy to get caught up in.
James Davenport: Hearth-slow down, please!
There’s a new Hearthstone adventure out and with it comes extra incentive for new players to stay away. I’m glad that Blizzard is releasing updates for their wildly successful CCG, but what started out as a convenient way to get into a Magic-esque game is now too expensive to simply hop into. Sure, it’s technically free-to-play, but it feels impossible to be competitive without owning a decent amount of the expansion and adventure cards, none of which come cheap in terms of money or time. I’m not angry, just sad that there aren’t more options for getting into the game and feeling somewhat viable without emptying my wallet—starter decks, maybe?
I’m envious of all the Hearthstone talk around the office, and would love to be a part of the club, but a guy’s gotta eat, you know?
Tom Senior: Release madness
The release season is here, which means we’re about to be joyfully swept away by a tsunami of exciting new games. For us, it’s a good problem to have, but the rush to capture fall and Christmas sales leaves great games behind. and companies with bigger marketing budgets can bury competitors entirely. We’re all enjoying Fallout 4 this week, but let’s not forget that the beautiful and challenging Galak-Z was also released. Earlier this year Mad Max came out in the same week as Metal Gear Solid 5. Only one sandy sandbox game was going to win that contest.
It could have been worse. XCOM 2 and Mirror’s Edge 2 have been pushed back to next year, along with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. But that’s how it should be. Good games can do well throughout the year. GTA 5 happily released in April, and I hear that was quite popular.
Chris Livingston: Skip-boy
I think the Pip-boy has had its day. I know there's a lot of nostalgic attachment to the enormous smartwatch, and Fallout 4's version is better than it ever was. But sheez, it's still a remarkably bad way to manage your inventory and information. I get the charm of low-tech looks, but the map is, as it always was, pretty terrible to actually use, with blocky icons bleeding into each other until you zoom all the way in on the more crowded areas so you can select the correct one.
And while you can at least sort inventory by weight and value and a few other stats, it's still not enough. After a typical trip I'm loaded down with tons of armor, especially pieces of armor, and I want to quickly determine which hunk of metal or leather I should strap to my various arms and legs. I can't line up all my right-arm or left-leg parts together, though, to quickly compare them to each other, so there's a lot of repetitive scrolling up and down to find all the left-leg pieces, then all the right-leg pieces, and so on. Same with meds vs. food, where I still need to scroll past dozens of edible bug chunks and monster meats to see how many legit healing drugs I have left. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a Pip-boy in the game—I'm sure the outrage would reach atomic levels—but it could sure use some rethinking. Once again, we'll have to see what the modding community comes up with.
Tim Clark: Not falling in love
Is it weird that I don’t want to play Fallout 4? It’s not that I think it’s bad, or that the people who love it are somehow wrong, it just leaves me strangely cold in a way that Skyrim never did. I ducked out of Fallout 3 very early following an incredibly frustrating encounter with some fire ants. (It was really... buggy. *puts Caruso shades on*.)
Having watched around 80 hours of my other half playing the new one on PS4—the loading times on console are absolutely parlous, by the way—and seeing her wrestle with two locked out quests due to disappearing mission items, I just have no desire to fire it up on PC. It also sure does look a lot like Fallout 3. I realise this probably marks me out as some sort of tedious contrarian and/or idiot, but I’m just not feeling Fallout 4 right now.
I think, maybe, an element for me is that if the world’s already been entirely irradiated and ruined, it’s hard to know what I’d be struggling for beyond sweet loot for sweet loot’s sake. (Which, to be fair, is usually enough.) But in Skyrim there was a genuine sense of being integral to the future of this glorious, ice-swept world. But a none-more-brown American hellscape? The mutants can have it.
Wes Fenlon: The 13-year odyssey of Final Fantasy XI
I don't think anyone dreamed, 13 years ago, that Final Fantasy XI would be around this long. Once the black sheep of the Final Fantasy family, XI has become Square Enix's most successful game (and biggest moneymaker) ever, maintaining a small but loyal subscriber base for more than a decade. Over that period it's grown and grown, with expansions adding to a story some Final Fantasy fans call the best in the series. Now that story is wrapping up with the game's final updates, and I wish I could enjoy it. I'm pretty sure I'd be bored stiff playing through hundreds of hours of MMO questing and grinding. It's just not my genre. But I'm still left wondering about the 13-year-long story I'm missing out on.
Tom Marks: The PC Gamer Show in limbo
Our office move is going very well, but we don’t still don’t quite have a podcasting studio fully setup yet, which means The PC Gamer Show is still happening over VoIP. It’s going great still (and I highly recommend you all tune in to it) but you can’t quite beat the feeling of everyone being in the same room together. Luckily we’ll only have one more week of doing the show like this and then it’s back to regular business!
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